


Cold Hands, Warm Heart

by Dale_Gardener



Category: Starsky & Hutch
Genre: Community: spook_me, Gen, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-25
Updated: 2010-10-25
Packaged: 2017-10-12 21:25:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/129241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dale_Gardener/pseuds/Dale_Gardener
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hutch has been missing for three days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold Hands, Warm Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Nico for the beta, and to Nico and Judy both for their valuable help with the last section of this story.

Hutch has been missing for three days. With his partner gone who knows where, (although he has a few suspicions that have left him queasy in the small hours), Starsky believes with passionate fervour that there is nothing that's too much effort to find him. This maybe accounts for the shouting match with Dobey. Huggy's been kind, but that hasn't stopped him kicking Starsky out of The Pits.

Cities don't sleep, any more than Starsky or any of his snitches or contacts when he's on the hunt. But nothing works. Nobody has an idea worth a damn, and Starsky drives the dark streets wrestling with another idea - that Hutch isn't going to sit beside him again any time soon, or ever, bitching about Starsky's taste in cars and food and women.

The street is empty outside Venice Place. Hutch's car is still in the police garage and the forensic staff have gone over it with meticulous care, as has Starsky. It's yielded up Hutch's wallet and badge and the crazy debris that Hutch's cars always seem to collect, but nothing in the way of answers. Hutch's apartment might be empty of answers too, but that doesn't stop Starsky from climbing the stairs and letting himself in. Hell, he tells himself, the plants might need watering by now. Hutch will appreciate it when he comes back, and Starsky's opinion is that if Hutch's plants die of drowning rather than drought, at least Hutch will understand that Starsky tried. Hutch may not understand so much why Starsky is using his apartment like a kid's blanky, but Starsky won't have to tell him that.

The apartment is vacantly quiet, and orderly by Hutch's standards, and slightly chilly. Starsky steps forward briskly to find the little watering can with its giraffe neck spout, the bright red one that Kiko bought for a Christmas present way back when.

"Hey, plants," he says, feeling utterly stupid. Two words is the limit of his man-to-vegetation conversational ability, but at least with the plants watered he's done something useful. One hand clenches around the red handle of the watering can, and the side of the fist of his free hand slams hard into the door frame.

"Starsky?"

He whirls, peering into the dimness of the unlit bedroom. A tall shadow looms there, and then the shadow steps into the light.

"You son of a bitch!" Starsky crows. The little watering can hits the floor with a plastic clatter. "Where the hell have you been?" Arms outstretched, he grabs Hutch and spins him around. "You've been driving me nuts! Oh my god!" He throws his arms around his friend and thumps him on the back. "You're cold enough we could take an ice pick to you and drop you in a scotch. Come on," he says, steering the unresisting figure to the sofa, " sit down. I'll get you a blanket. Hutch, where have you been?"

Hutch blinks at this storm of words and action, but then he smiles, a slow, pleased smile and shifts the blanket dropped over him to drape himself more comfortably.

"Somewhere out the back of Marana Canyon, keeping company with Andy Ventura and Reece Griffin. They weren't much in the way of hosts."

"Those bastards," Starsky growls. "They grabbed you Friday, and they've been what, taking tea with you since then?"

"I wish. No, they were keeping tabs on me because I think that _Mister_ Sackett wanted a chance to talk with me, but he was finding his time taken up with other matters." Hutch shares a smile with Starsky, a satisfied hunter's grin. "And then..." He stops.

"And then what?" Starsky demands. All of them suspected Sackett's involvement: Starsky, Dobey, Huggy. But suspecting and proving are two different things.

"I heard gunshots." Hutch's voice is almost dreamy. "Gunshots. And then a man I don't know opened the door and told me to get the hell out. I figured that maybe it was some sick game, and maybe it wasn't, and I got up and walked out. No game. Griffin and Ventura were dead on the floor, and I got the hell out." He smiles again, wry and confused. "Pity my unknown rescuer didn't let me use the phone, but you can't have everything."

"What did he look like? This guy? Did he fit any descriptions we've got? What about Mulroney's people? We know that he's been trying to horn in on Sackett's action for a while."

Hutch's hands lift to try and stem the spate of words. "I didn't know him, Starsk. But find me some mug shots and I'll do my best."

Starsky shoots up from the sofa arm where he's been perching through Hutch's quiet recitation. "Yeah, we'll do that, baby blue. March you down town and watch all their faces. There's going to be some big smiles, Hutch."

"That wouldn't surprise me. Just how crazy did you drive everyone when I was gone?"

Starsky's hands fly up in negation. "Hey! That's not fair. Why would you assume that I'd be a pain in the ass like that?"

Such a broad, beautiful smile on Hutch's face. "Because," he says slyly.

"'Because' is no sort of an answer. It's a wiseass answer, I'll give you that." Then as Hutch stands, slowly, as if it's something he needs to practise, Starsky pops fingers against his temple in exasperated realisation. "You're a wiseass and I'm a moron. The hospital, before the station."

Hutch shakes his head. "I don't need a doctor. I'm fine."

"Oh come on! They didn't mark your face, bully for them, but you're going to tell me that they didn't land a kick or a punch or two?" He reaches out for Hutch's shirt front, only to have his hands batted away.

"I'm okay, Starsk. Yes, they hit me a couple of times, but you and I, we've been there a dozen times and got the souvenirs, right? I don't need a doctor, and I'd rather work."

Starsky face might just freeze forever in the smile he's wearing. "Oh, yeah. We are going to _work_. And you are going to live with a little protection in your life, because if Sackett didn't just try to pervert the course of justice then I'm a monkey's uncle."

"And you're certainly not that," Hutch says.

Starsky laughs, like it was Christmas morning and he has everything that he's always wanted. "You betcha I'm not." He slings his arm over Hutch's shoulders. "Damn it, Hutch. I am so glad that you're okay." He always has been mercurial, and for a moment the euphoric mood slips into something deeper. "So fucking glad."

Hutch turns his head, and looks at Starsky with amused, fathomless affection, before his face darkens. "You worked so hard to come back, after Gunther, after everything. Coming back from that canyon was the least I could do." He shakes his head, considering perhaps he didn't effect his own rescue this time. "Even if it was just luck."

"I'm not turning down luck, my friend. Let's go check out those mug shots. Maybe I can give our criminal friend a big smacker of a kiss before we haul his ass in for murder."

***

  
They never do identify Hutch's rescuer. This is a sore point with everyone, but there's only so much time to dwell on it, although the two regular homicide guys attached to the case, Caldwell and Dworkin, get to dwell on it more than anybody else. They wish that they knew why Ventura and Griffin were shot with their own weapons, but sometimes you just never know and cases go unsolved.

The BCPD watches Hutch like a fussy Jewish mother, according to Hutch's reckoning. Starsky objects to this description because he points out the only contact that Hutch has had with Jewish mothers is his occasional conversations with Starsky's mom, and what business does Hutch have stereotyping like that anyway? Hutch comments that Starsky's been getting an education behind his back and what sort of behaviour is that for a man's partner?

Hutch gives testimony at Sackett's trial, and Starsky takes dark pleasure in watching Sackett's face. Hutch's presence and testimony was never in any doubt, but Sackett still looks like he's seeing a ghost the entire time that Hutch is on the stand.

***

"Whaddaya want?" Starsky asks as they pull up outside his favourite chilli dog stand.

"I'll let you pollute your body with fake colours and preservatives. I have real food waiting at home."

"Yeah, you must be a regular Julia Child. Huggy looked pretty sad that you sent most of those eggs back on Tuesday." Starsky is proud that he's struck just the right, razzing note. Because Hutch looks fine, sure, but whenever he eats out in company he eats hardly anything, and it's starting to bother Starsky. Once, just once, he'd like to see Hutch enjoy a decent meal.

"Healthy mind in a healthy body, Starsk," Hutch says, hand gesturing to head and abdomen. "You should try it."

Sure I'd try it, Starsky thinks, except that these days invitations to try out your healthy home cooking happen about as often as finding virgins in a whorehouse.

***

A month after his committal to prison for a very long term, Sackett requests a meeting with Detectives Starsky and Hutchinson. He's waiting for them when they arrive, dressed in his plain prison shirt and prison pants. His nails are trimmed and tidy but the manicure shine is long gone.

Hutch and Starsky sit themselves down on the hard visitor chairs, and Sackett wastes no time in pleasantries.

"Who _are_ you?" he asks Hutch.

Hutch and Starsky swivel their heads to share a look, and then Hutch turns back to Sackett and says coolly, "That's a rather odd question coming from you, isn't it? You're the one who asked us to come here."

"Yes," Sackett says, "I did. I want to tell you a story."

"I hope it's worth it," Starsky says.

Sackett smiles, but it's a weird smile. "I think it is, anyway. Once upon a time," he begins, "there was a businessman who was having a little difficulty with the local law enforcement. And this businessman arranged to have some friends of his have a talk with one particular law enforcement officer. The kind of talk that's permanent, if you know what I mean."

"I think I've heard this one," Starsky says brightly. "The officer gets away and comes back to testify against the businessman." The last word is very precise in his mouth, the edges of it sharpened with contempt. Beside him, Hutch is very still.

"This businessman - he's restricted to his home because there's some delicate negotiations occurring, and he's kind of disappointed that he can't have the talk with the officer himself. But he has a faithful employee, and the employee brings him two things - a cassette tape and a Polaroid, so that the businessman knows that the talk went according to plan."

Sackett tilts his chair on the back two legs. "You were a choir boy when you were a kid, weren't you, Detective Hutchinson?" He puts a weird emphasis on Hutch's name.

"Yes, yes I was."

Starsky is getting impatient. He and Hutch have come here in the hope that Sackett might have something useful to say, but this is all bullshit. But it's bullshit that Hutch seems to find completely fascinating.

"A nice singing voice, and a nice speaking voice." Sackett leans forward again, and there's sweat on his forehead. "Andy brought me a tape. He told me all about making it. He had his gun jammed up against your skull and he told you to talk to me. And you did, and you were no choir boy, Hutchinson. You had some pretty choice words about seeing me in hell, and then there's one big bang on that tape and you're not saying disrespectful words any more."

Starsky's heard more than enough. He stands up, and he leans his hands on the table and he stares into Sackett's sweaty, ugly face. "Prison isn't being kind to your mental health. Or maybe Andy wasn't such a faithful employee."

"Andy was my fucking dog." Sackett takes his eyes away from Starsky and turns back to Hutch. "He brought me a pretty picture too, of you with your eyes all turned up, and the hole in the back of your head leaving a mess on the carpet."

Starsky has Sackett up out of his chair, and pinned against the wall so fast that it's all a red blur.

"Starsky!" He ignores the voice. "Starsky! That's enough."

Hutch's hand, cool, controlled, rests on his forearm. "Let him go. Mr Sackett is just telling us a story. Isn't that right, Mr Sackett?"

Starsky steps back, his chest heaving with rage. Bad enough that Sackett's wasted their time, but with this? With this?

Sackett stares at Starsky. "Are you in it, Starsky? Or are you being played along with every body else?"

Starsky jerks a thumb towards Hutch. "You think I don't know my partner? You think I don't know my friend? I don't know what you're up to, but I'm not playing _anything_." He turns furiously to Hutch. "You want to listen to this, fine. But I'm out of here."

He stalks across the small room and bangs on the door. Sackett starts shouting, "There's a body buried at the far end of the canyon. You tell Albie that Mr Sackett wants him to show you. You tell him!" The guard lets Starsky out and shuts the door on the noise. Starsky paces in a bare little waiting room with dead flies on the windowsill for some five minutes before Hutch comes out.

"Can you believe that? Can you believe that? I don't believe it. Half a day that we could have spent doing something useful and we had to waste it on fucking fairy stories."

Hutch's face is set. "He says that he destroyed them. The tape and the photograph."

"Well he would. That way he doesn't have to back up his lying bullshit with any evidence. I mean, the guy's nuts." He looks at his partner beside him, and hates how he looks dimmed, almost, in this shabby, ugly room. "Paranoid. Although I'd like to be a fly on the wall if he tries taking that one to the DA." He tries to imitate Sackett's tones. "'It was a mistrial because that wasn't Detective Sergeant Hutchinson on the stand. It was his secret twin brother come to put me away for revenge.' Crazy bastard. Crazy."

Hutch's hand waves in a gentle arc of dismissal. "Crazy as a loon."

***

  
Dobey frowns at them across his desk. "Do either of you hotshots want to explain to me why you ignored information about a dead body?"

"Oh, come on, Captain!" Starsky protests. "Is this about Sackett? The guy sat there trying to tell us that Hutch isn't Hutch and we're supposed to listen to his bullcrap about a body? I don't think so."

"The fact remains that after your failure, he arranged for Homicide to receive the information, and there was indeed a dead body," Dobey says severely. "It doesn't look good when two cops ignore murder."

"Murder?" Hutch asks.

"Shot execution style. The body is pretty far gone but that much is clear."

Starsky presses his knuckles against his mouth. "So, maybe we should have followed that up. But Sackett - he was talking crazy."

"He's still talking crazy. Keeps saying that it was Hutchinson." There is a stifled silence before Dobey continues. "And for that reason, your lack of follow-up to Sackett's report is understood and won't count against you or be investigated any further."

"Wait a minute." Hutch lifts his hand. "This body is me?"

"That's what he said."

Starsky laughs, short and sharp. "Can we be excused, Captain? Crime to fight, bad guys to put in the pen, the usual?"

"No, wait up, Starsk." Hutch turns back to Dobey. "Is there any evidence to back up Sackett's claims?"

Dobey frowns. "Is that a joke?"

Hutch pauses, also frowning for a moment. "No. I was just intrigued by the depth of Mr Sackett's delusions. Starsky has the right idea, Captain. Perhaps we should get back to our work."

Dobey waves a hand. "Go on. I'll tell Archer in Homicide that we've discussed the matter, and that'll be an end of it."

***

Another day, another shootout in some bad neighbourhood, rinky-dink supermarket. Strung out junkie bandit, aisle three, convenience foods; Starsky, aisle four, baked goods; Hutch, hunkered down by the pyramid of canned goods that must go now!. This is, Starsky thinks, no way to make a living. A customer trapped in the far corner yelps as the junkie fires off another shot and more of the glass in the front window collapses with a shattering crash. Junkie is screaming incoherently, "I'll kill you, I'll kill myself, where the fuck is Mac?" He keeps screaming that name. "Mac! Mac!" Then he fires off another shot, and glass from a fluorescent bulb above showers onto the floor.

Junkie makes a run for it through the back, and Starsky follows. He doesn't look behind him. He knows that Hutch is close. It's dim out the back and Junkie makes a hard right around some crates, heading for the truck bay, and Starsky is around that corner in hot pursuit when another player steps out on his left. This guy is maybe ten years older than junkie, and solid where junkie is skinny, and Starsky realises two things. He's looking at Mac, and he's pinned between two men with guns and Hutch doesn't have a line of fire at either of them.

Hopelessly he fires at Mac, but he's still expecting the heavy thump of another bullet, in his body, just like in the Metro parking-lot, and he feels sick for himself and for Hutch as well. But at least Hutch will know there's two of them. All the gun reports meld into one heavy roll of thunder, and he realises that he's still standing, and he's not hurt. Mac is on the ground, barely hanging on to his gun, and Starsky dashes forward and disarms him, and cuffs him regardless of the whine of pain from the wounded man. He looks towards the truck bay. Hutch is doing the same. Or at least, he's kneeling beside the junkie, who doesn't appear to be moving. Hutch lifts his head and stares at Starsky, and then he nods, more to himself than anything.

Starsky stands. "It's not that I'm not grateful - but how the hell did you do that?"

"Adrenalin is a wonderful thing. And I wasn't that far behind you."

Starsky knows that. Knowing where Hutch is - it's like chess moves, it's like dance. Of course Hutch wasn't that far behind him - but Starsky still can't figure out when or how Hutch got past him to take that shot.

***

  
Barnes from Homicide comes in making this annoying 'doo-doo doo-doo' noise, and throws a file down in front of Starsky. "Halloween reading, Starsky. What do you think of this?"

"What do I think of what?"

Barnes ignores him and stares around the room. "Where's your better half? He'll enjoy this too."

Starsky realises that he didn't see Hutch go - but he won't be far away. "Taking a leak. Whatcha got?"

"That stiff, Sackett's stiff, the one that Mr Looney-Tunes kept insisting was Hutchinson? Got the same dental work as your blond friend. Is that, or is that not, amazing?"

Starsky grabs the file. "Who authorised the check?"

"Sackett's lawyer put the heat on Archer and the coroner. Apparently he's a little concerned about his client's sanity." Barnes rolls his eyes. "Gee whiz, I wonder why?"

Starsky leans back and forces his face into a smile. "The only amazing thing about this is how it won't go away. It's a real trip." He hands the file back to Barnes. "Thanks for the laugh. I'll be sure to tell Hutch."

Barnes doesn't seem to figure out that he's been dismissed. "Whaddaya think? Coincidence, or deep dark underworld plot?"

"Oh, underworld plot for sure," Starsky says. "Poor fucker." He infuses his voice with weary disgust; he's not interested in this conversation and reminding Barnes that some poor sap is dead successfully sends him on his way, ready to inflict his ghoulish conversation somewhere fucking else. He bends his head to his paperwork, before instinct eventually raises it again.

"Practising your stealth?" he asks.

"So?" Hutch says in a dry, teasing tone. "I bet you never even noticed I was gone."

"No," Starsky says. "No, I didn't."

***

Because it was so clearly murder, the man in the morgue isn't buried immediately, but he can't stay above ground indefinitely. Eventually there's a county burial and all that's left is the photographs and paperwork of a cold case file, and Starsky starts getting a serious itch to look at that file. One night Starsky drops Hutch off, and then he turns around and he drives right back to Metro, and he does a little sweet-talking. It's a skill. A man should use his skills.

He takes the archive box and he empties it out, and he reads the file from cover to cover. Height, build, likely weight, sex, age - they'd all fit Kenneth Hutchinson, as would the dental work. The remains of the corpse's clothes would indicate that he was wearing denim jeans, a nylon windbreaker, and a polyester-cotton blend button-down shirt, possibly originally blue in colour from dye analysis of the remains. Starsky stares at the photograph. It's a corpse, more than six months buried in the Southern California dirt, and there's little left that's not bone: some stringy cartilage, some papery stretches of skin here and there.

The only other item in the box is a watch. It's grimed and encrusted with dirt, and the face is stained from contact with corruption and the elements. It has engraving on the back, barely visible: PKH, and a date, 17th May 1917. Starsky doesn't know what the date might signify, but he knows that Hutch's grandfather was called Paul Kenneth Hutchinson, and he knows that he's seen a watch very like this in his partner's hand.

He puts it all away, and he goes home and he gets so drunk that he has to call in sick the next morning. Hutch can drive himself for a change.

***

Nicky never could help himself; wrong people, wrong place, wrong time. And there's never a good time for a funeral.

Starsky sits hunched in his seat. He's not even that tall, certainly not as long in the leg as Hutch, and he still feels claustrophobic - and cold. "You'd think," he gripes, "that with the price that you pay for airline tickets that they could do something about the air conditioning. I'm freezing."

"Can't say I've noticed it," Hutch says. "Think of it as hardening you for that NYC winter."

"You're a perfect ray of sunshine," Starsky says, and digs into the bottom of his packet of peanuts for the last crumbs.

"That's me," Hutch says. It's almost literal. The light from the window catches Hutch's hair and makes a transparent, golden nimbus out of it.

"I haven't said thank you, yet," Starsky says, folding the peanut wrapper over and over.

"You don't have to." Hutch turns his head away to stare out at the sun above and the clouds below. "I wouldn't let you do this alone."

"Yeah." Starsky pauses and then asks his question. "You never did think much of Nicky, did you?"

Hutch keeps looking out the window. "He was your brother and you loved him. What I think doesn't come into the equation."

"He wasn't worth much." Starsky swallows painfully. "At least, not as much as he should have been." He rests his head on the seatback and stares up at the little reading light, the ventilation funnel, the button to call the stewardess. "It's gonna kill Ma."

Hutch turns back, and there's a gentle smile on his face. "She still has you." He shrugs. "It's terrible that she has to face this, but.... She's _your_ mother. I think she's tougher than you give her credit."

Yes, Starsky thinks, we're a tough little family, and look where being tough got Nicky. The stupid shit, he thinks, and that smouldering anger is what gets him through the airplane flight, and the disembarking at JFK, and the taxi to his mother's apartment in Queens, with Hutch a silent presence beside him.

His mother's friend, Shirley Nussbaum, lets them inside. She hugs him and murmurs, "She's not so good, Davey," and gravely shakes hands with Hutch. "But you're cold," she says. "The weather has been so nasty all week here."

Starsky approaches his mother. "Boychik," she says, her face drawn with misery, and he just drops to his knees in front of her, and buries his face against her breast. It's the right thing to do. She needs to cradle the child she has left, and she cries for while, rocking them both.

In the background, he can hear Hutch and Shirley talking quietly, neither of them embarrassed. That's why Shirley is good for his mother, and Hutch is good for him.

Knowing that Hutch is there carries him through. It carries him through the prayers and the interment. Hutch is nearby, sombre and respectful in a dark suit that Starsky doesn't remember seeing before, his bright hair capped with a borrowed yarmulke. Hutch's presence carries him through conversation with the relatives and friends who come bearing food and ritual consolation.

Late in the evening when everyone else is gone, his mother still sits quietly on the sofa, her eyes far away, a cooling cup of tea held in her lap. She turns to Starsky and says, "It's late. Go tell your friend to go to bed. You too, Davey."

"Okay, Ma," he says, her obedient Jewish son who she well knows is ignorant of the interior of any synagogue on the west coast, and kisses her. She strokes his cheek, her eyes bright with unshed tears. "When you go back, you'll be careful?"

"I promise," he says.

Hutch is in the kitchen, out of sight from the living room, and being useful. It amuses Starsky that a man who's so often careless about his own housekeeping is so very punctilious about other people's. Kenneth Hutchinson, the careful guest. The remains of the junk mail that Hutch used earlier to wrap the food scraps lies on the kitchen table. "Cute coincidence. You wore it better," Starsky says, as he realises that he saw the suit and tie in the picture on Hutch that afternoon. "You could always fall back on modelling if this cop thing doesn't work out."

Hutch looks disconcerted as he checks out the advertisement, and then he grins disarmingly. "Only if Mr Tyrone takes my pictures."

"I dunno. I think I lost my stepladder." Starsky swallows. He's tired and he's getting stupidly sentimental with it. "You and I are under orders to go to bed like good boys." He heads to the little bedroom that he used to share with Nicky a very long time ago. The mirror on the dresser is covered, shrouded in respect for death like his baby brother, and he stands in front of it and takes off his watch and his rings. His hands shake, so he presses them against the scarred wooden top of the dresser, but they don't stop shaking, and neither do his shoulders.

He stands there and cries silently for only a few seconds before Hutch is there. "Oh, Starsk," he says, sounding as wretched as Starsky feels, and takes the hand that's not covering Starsky's face and holds it tight, the way that Starsky held his mother's hand earlier that day. Hutch's hand is cold, but that doesn't matter. Maybe, Starsky thinks, he'll get Shirley to knit Hutch some fingerless gloves, like the old men used to wear in the winter.

It takes a long time for Starsky to quietly cry himself out, and all the time Hutch grips his hand and says nothing more. After a while, Hutch lets go and brings back a white handkerchief from Starsky's bag. Starsky blows his nose, hoping that he's not too noisy. Sound travels and he doesn't want to disturb his mother.

"Better get to bed, buddy," Hutch says softly. Somewhere along the way he's changed into his own sleeping clothes - an old t-shirt and sweat pants, in deference to his guest status.

Starsky nods his agreement, and gets undressed and climbs under the covers, trying to get warm. Hutch turns the light out and they lie there in the dark. Hutch's breathing is so quiet that it's as if he's not there at all, but Starsky knows he'll see him when he wakes, and that? That's the only important thing. The only one.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this story for [the Spook Me comm on LJ and DW](http://spook-me.dreamwidth.org/), a Halloween/horror story challenge. My main prompt was ghost, although I also had a couple of classic horror comics covers for inspiration as well.


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